Is it just me or is this completely unrealistic due to costs and will never happen (at least not this project and by the 2023 timeframe)? Not to mention - wouldn't you need to go deep underground on Mars, or else have like a meter of lead between you and an atmosphere filled with deadly radiation?

SO...who wants to help fund my plan to kill a group of people gullible enough to volunteer to be killed in the name of science? It'll be groundbreaking, and may or may not involve killing them slowly by way of oxygen deprivation and radiation poisoning.

Farce-Side:SO...who wants to help fund my plan to kill a group of people gullible enough to volunteer to be killed in the name of science? It'll be groundbreaking, and may or may not involve killing them slowly by way of oxygen deprivation and radiation poisoning.

Fund it? No, but fark it I'll volunteer. Not like I'm doing anything with my life except sitting in a cubicle rotting away day after day anyway. I've got a Masters in CS, an associates in Electronics, and depending on your lead time I could always get Masters in Mechanical or Electrical engineering.

Slaves2Darkness:Farce-Side: SO...who wants to help fund my plan to kill a group of people gullible enough to volunteer to be killed in the name of science? It'll be groundbreaking, and may or may not involve killing them slowly by way of oxygen deprivation and radiation poisoning.

Fund it? No, but fark it I'll volunteer. Not like I'm doing anything with my life except sitting in a cubicle rotting away day after day anyway. I've got a Masters in CS, an associates in Electronics, and depending on your lead time I could always get Masters in Mechanical or Electrical engineering.

I'd volunteer as well. I only have a Bachelor's degree, but I know how to make a killer grill-cheese sandwich and can open cans without dropping the lid inside. That has to count for something.

The First Four Katy Perry Albums:Is it just me or is this completely unrealistic due to costs and will never happen (at least not this project and by the 2023 timeframe)? Not to mention - wouldn't you need to go deep underground on Mars, or else have like a meter of lead between you and an atmosphere filled with deadly radiation?

As for budgets IIRC the estimated costs of getting a crew to Mars and back works out to be the take of the top 10 or 15 grossing movies. These guys aren't planning on bringing anyone back but I suspect keeping people alive on Mars would be more expensive than bringing them back. So I agree that these guys are not likely to succeed in pulling together enough money to succeed but I think their chances are larger than infinitesimal. Another thing is after you have been sitting on Mars staring at red dust for a few months you would probably wish you were dead.

We're not even a planetary society yet. How the fark are we supposed to jump to inter-planetary status before? God forbid Russia collonize Mars, cause if they do, Amurica will just have to blow it up from Titan.

/send Snookie, G-dubya, and The Rolling Stones//second though, we'll keep the stones. they have the secrets to immortality

You know, barring the obvious scientific difficulties with this idea... What bothers me is you are going to send a group of people who barely know each other to a planet where they can really only hang out in the structures you built and go outside for only short amounts of time.

Where would food, air, water, etc. come from? What about entertainment? You can't easily get a good internet connection there, and you'd have no movie theatre. No advanced medical equipment if something went wrong. No mining equipment to produce more structures and habitats...

This is closer to creating a prison in the middle of the desert and giving everyone there a life sentence. -They'd go crazy without a ton of life's comforts.

If this was a serious scientific expedition, we'd see them run trials on all people who want to go. They'd make the same setup here and put all of the contestants in a similar habitat with no contact to the outside world for an entire year or two at least to see what happened.

At best this is a marketing gimmick to get attention and money for a project that even *if* it takes off will end up with a gruesome end.

That being said, I too would like to help colonize another planet. But a planet that on its own could easily support *human* life so I could walk outside and breathe in the fresh air.

rwfan:As for budgets IIRC the estimated costs of getting a crew to Mars and back works out to be the take of the top 10 or 15 grossing movies. These guys aren't planning on bringing anyone back but I suspect keeping people alive on Mars would be more expensive than bringing them back.

I wonder how much they are budgetting for sixty or more years of resupply. And what do they propose to do about medical treatment?

orbister:rwfan: As for budgets IIRC the estimated costs of getting a crew to Mars and back works out to be the take of the top 10 or 15 grossing movies. These guys aren't planning on bringing anyone back but I suspect keeping people alive on Mars would be more expensive than bringing them back.

I wonder how much they are budgetting for sixty or more years of resupply. And what do they propose to do about medical treatment?

I think I would pass the selection criteria. Three years ago, I would've jumped at this.

But now I see Mars as nothing but a barren dustball. I don't see the point of this. "Curiousity" is insufficient - we can map and record every feature of Mars. This seems like throwing four humans on a one-way trip for nothing but the same reasons to hit a golf ball around on the moon.

There's nothing there, and we don't yet have the technology to make anything there that's more meaningful than an undersea base in our own oceans - and it would be less meaningful, because there are tons of scientific possibilities in our oceans! Mars is just a dead rock with a razor's edge of atmo.

I'd be first in line for this... but not for $5ook... sorry, not worth the money. I would volunteer to be part of the first crew there to set up a settlement, especially if I could bring the wife... but I'm not going to pay $1M for the two of us to play pioneer on another planet.

They really need to rethink that, make the first trip not paid-for by the travelers... have them go free the one trip, set things up... then when people see it's a real thing, they could ask more per ticket. Otherwise those smart enough to have that kind of money would shy away, those that don't would want to go... but yeah, that does not work does it?

I signed up for this probably a year or so ago. I'm assuming the eight-year training regimen will take care of the basic requirements for survival. Personally, I'm not fussed in the least that it's a one-way trip - I want off of this ride we call Earth, everyone is bugnuts crazy and shooting each other.

I signed up for this probably a year or so ago. I'm assuming the eight-year training regimen will take care of the basic requirements for survival. Personally, I'm not fussed in the least that it's a one-way trip - I want off of this ride we call Earth, everyone is bugnuts crazy and shooting each other.

Believing that all of your fellow humans are 'bugnuts crazy' and that the best way for you to learn to function in society is to leave it....means that you are totally a socialogically stable and sound candidate for this sort of thing? Interestiing.

I signed up for this probably a year or so ago. I'm assuming the eight-year training regimen will take care of the basic requirements for survival. Personally, I'm not fussed in the least that it's a one-way trip - I want off of this ride we call Earth, everyone is bugnuts crazy and shooting each other.

Or maybe you could just go live in the woods for a few years. At least then, you can change your mind. Not only that, but the fact that you're deliberately hanging out on fark.com shows me that you really don't want to get away from assholes, you just want to complain about them.

I signed up for this probably a year or so ago. I'm assuming the eight-year training regimen will take care of the basic requirements for survival. Personally, I'm not fussed in the least that it's a one-way trip - I want off of this ride we call Earth, everyone is bugnuts crazy and shooting each other.

What do you feel is the purpose of going there?Personally, I'd go if there seemed to be a point. But it looks like just another rat race. "The astronaut's time will be taken up with building living space and tending to self-sufficiency" (paraphrase). It's a windy bunch of rocks. If there was a chance at something else - using the lower gravity to use Mars as a staging point for other solar missions, sure! Blow some asteroids down to start terraforming events, sure! But as far as I can see, you're just signing up to play house on a windy bunch of rocks. No?